Alex Iskold at the ReadWriteWeb has cast another look at Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm”. The concept has been at the cornerstone of a lot of technology thinking. Even John O’Hara’s book “Commercialising Innovation” is heavily based on it. Alex has hit the nail on the head by highlighting the following problem …

The problem is that compared to a few years ago, the speed with which new technologies are coming to the market has increased dramatically. All these technologies are aimed at the early adopters. And they love it and they try it. But the question is what happens when your early adopters run off to play with a new great thing before you have a chance to take your technology mainstream?

Yesterday’s Friendster is today’s MySpace and tomorrow’s Facebook.



This is actually nothing new, Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” has a case study of the disk drive industry and shows how the disruptive innovations in the disk technology often left the current market leaders in the dust.

What is an entrepreneur to do ????

Mauricio had just posted about the ads for Nokia N95 , now compare those ads for the iPhone. Which one is going to be more effective ???

Apparently, there are only 12 types of commercials.(iPhone is a “Demo” and the N95 is a “parody”.) Who knew ?!?

Just discovered the Venture Hacks blog on venture capital, from a response to Paul Graham’s essay on “The Equity Equation”.

It has some great advice on

• Vesting
• Terms Sheets
• Options

The 37 signals guys created a post where you could ask them anything.

I decided that I would asked them something that has been bugging me a little bit after reading “Getting Real” about how they manage multiple products.

You guys have a number of products and a small team. How do you prioritize the work on your products? (How does Getting Real apply to multiple projects ?)

Their response…

There’s no real science behind it. Different people are working on different things all the time. One person usually works on one product at a time. If it’s a bigger update or requires additional expertise then two or three people may pitch in. Sometimes a designer and programmer work together. Other times it may just be a designer and other times just a programmer.

Sometimes some products go untouched for a few months or more. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s often good to let things just be the way they are for a good while. Then we’ll come back armed with a lot of good longer-term feedback and decide what to work on next.

Well, that all makes makes sense and fits in with their whole approach.

So if there is anything you want to know about Getting Real or 37 signals, now is the time to ask !

We’ve been a bit quiet on what we’ve been doing, so here’s a run down on what we’ve been working on over the last few months.

• US Maps: We been building and rendering maps for North America (USA and Canada) for one of our clients. We’ve designed and rendered a large part of the US using mapserver and Teleatlas data. After maxing out 8 machines and some serious RAID kit, we’ve clocked over 10K CPU hours on the project so far and got a way to go yet.
• NZ maps: We been working on updates and upgrades to the NZ maps.
• New API: We’ve just in the final testing for a new API to compliment our mapping and geocoding API’s.
• Demo websites: We’ve been working on a new map concept with a couple of Wellington companies.
• New tools: We have a bunch of tools exiting the R&D phase entering production development. More info on those later.
• Oh yeah, and we’ve been planning Summer of Code 2.0.

So what’s with all the secrecy???? We want to get a bit of a headstart before Wises and et start copying us again!

There is a really good post from ZDNet suggests that the 80:20 rule of software development needs to be changed for SOA (Services Oriented Architecture).

Here’s a snippet from the article.

At first the amount of needed customization is high — maybe 80 percent (a perversion of the old rule) — either because there are not many services available, or because the services are too general and not specific to a specialized vertical industry or niche function.

Then, over time, with investment, the balance shifts toward the 50-50 point, and reuse forms a majority of a composite applications or business process, even for highly specialized applications. These composited functions then become business-focused service frameworks, to then be reused and adjusted. Those architects that gain experience within business niches and verticals to create such frameworks can make significant reuse of the services.

Joel Sposky has a post talking about a few books. He singles out a quote from Ben Casnocha’s book called My Start-Up Life.

Great entrepreneurs show up, take small risks (and sometimes, large risks), raise their hand when they’re confused, and try to figure out what’s going on and how a situation could be made better.

When you show up and raise your hand, you’ve already outperformed 90 percent of the crowd.

That’s a really preceptive insight from the 19 year old. I’ve meet plenty of people who have lots of great ideas, but not enough balls to ante, do something about it and the determination to see it through.

If we’re going to change that way of thinking, then we’ve got to start early. That’s one of the core drivers of the Summer of Code ie. show that there are options outside of the cubical farms of the big consulting companies. On the Summer of Code you’ll get paid to experience the life in a start-up and hopefully think of your own ideas to cook up.